5 Jazz Chord Substitutions You Need to Knov By Brent Vaarstra One of the prominent characteristics of jazz music is its rich harmonic language. N’ jazz utilize the full spectrum of diatonic harmonic movement, it includes modal har also a slew of substitutions. It's important for musicians studying jazz to know some of the common jazz chord that you will encounter in jazz standards. By being informed on these progressions have a serious leg up on getting your improvisation chops together. To back up just a little bit further, it's important for musicians to understand how c progressions are built in the first place. These are fundamentals of being informed harmony works, which is essential for becoming a great jazz improviser. But once you have some of these basics down, it will be incredibly helpful for you t understanding of how jazz musicians substitute chords for one another. Why? Bec jans do it all of the time. Just because the “official” chord progression to a given section of a jazz standard is such, doesn't mean that jazz musicians will play it straight. Often they will utilize di to substitute chord changes and create more or different kinds of harmonic mover So today’s lesson is all about common jazz chord substitutions. While there are m substitutions in the context of chord progressions, we will go over five important o need to know. It's important to note that the five chord substitutions are taken in the context of ¢ progression and not individual chords themselves. Today's lesson is borrowed from our flagship eBook Zero to Improv in which we go further detail on this topic and many others. Let's dive in! Replaces the |In jazz, you will often see the ili chord replacing the | chord. For example, in the key Cmaj7 is replaced by and Emin7. The common chord progression you will see this happen in is the |-vi-ii-V. This wou Amin7-Dmin7-G7. But when the ili replaces the |, it becomes Emin7-Amin7-Dmin; Ewin” Av Damn” G7 iil VI ii Vv It’s important to note that in this example the vi chord has been made into a domin (VD). This is a common practice in jazz and creates more voice leading. There you gc bonus! This brings us into the next one... 2. #i Diminished Replaces the VI If you turn the VI chord into a dominant 7 chord rather than its diatonically correct form, you open up some possibil ;. One of those is replacing VI with a diminishec Now, I don't want to go too much into the theory behind this. Diminished theory is lesson unto itself, so | would encourage you to check out this lesson for more on th Here's the context: a I-VI-ii-V, which in the key of C is Cmaj7-A7-Dmin7-G7. When #i diminished for the VI it becomes Cmaj7-C##dim7-Dmin7 G7. Cun? Chun? Duwi? G? ii Vv Think of it this way: a dominant 7 can be altered (b9,#9, b13, #11). If we were to rr chord into a dominant7(b9) chord it would share all of the important notes except note of the chord, with the C#dim7.Ane Chun? b, 3. Tritone Substitution We've written a lot about tritone substitution on Learn Jazz Standards and we wor of them in this lesson. Let's instead focus on the most typical example. First off, for those who are new to this concept, what is tritone substitution? A tritone substitution occurs whenever a chord is being substituted or replacec chord with a root a tritone interval away. Example: G7 is replaced by Db7. Atritone is an interval of three whole tones between two notes. You can also think or a#4 away from any given note. One of the most common tritone subs is Tritone Sub of V. In the context of a ii-V-I chord progression (Dmin7-G7-Cmaj7), you would replace the dominant 7 chord a tritone away: Db7. Dun? ow” Cun? (Tritone sub for G7) ii Tri Sub of V I 4. |-IV-iii-VI Turnaround to a ii-V-1 Today | am including in the definition of “substitution” as anything that provides an outside of the possible original changes. A turnaroundis anything that brings you back to the | chord. Our first example, turnaround heading back to the | chord. A I-VI-ii-V is a turnaround because it is cyc